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Stimulus Newsletter August 25 2010

During the peak of the Recovery Act, Stimulus News You Can Use was one way WSDOT kept transportation stakeholders updated on the fast-moving effort to put people to work and improve the state’s infrastructure. Each edition contained information on project delivery and highlights. Visit the Newsletter Archive for earlier editions.

New certification adds one local highway project and increases funds for I-405 project – Surplus funds due to low bids on earlier projects are helping provide additional funding to stimulus projects. On August 18, Governor Gregoire signed the latest certification to add one new Recovery Act project and contribute millions of additional funds to the state’s largest stimulus project. The new Ferry County – County Wide Guardrail project received $100,000 to install guardrail on Boulder Creek Road, Inchelium Highway, and West Curlew Lake Road. The certification also directs $22.5 million more stimulus dollars to the I-405/NE 8th Street to SR 520 – Bellevue Braids project. The project, currently under contract construction by Guy F. Atkinson, is WSDOT’s largest recipient of stimulus funds. The Recovery Act is now providing $79.5 million toward the total project budget of over $200 million.

Stimulus project employees earned almost $7 million in July – Employees on state and local projects receiving Recovery Act highway funds worked over 190,000 hours and earned payroll totaling nearly $7 million in July. To date, employees have worked over 2.9 million hours on projects receiving highway stimulus funds and earned more than $113 million. It was the 13th straight month workers have put in over 140,000 labor hours and earned over $5 million in payroll on stimulus projects. The full data set is available at WSDOT’s stimulus employment webpage.

Three more cable barrier projects completed on US 12 and I-90 – Three cable median barrier projects, funded out of the $9 million in Recovery Act funds for statewide improvements were completed on US 12 and I-90 in July. Ten cable median barrier projects receiving stimulus funds have been completed and three more are under way. The three completed projects below were combined for construction efficiencies.

1 This includes one state project that has stimulus funding authorized for pre-construction and is currently under way. 2All funds were obligated by the March 2, 2010 deadline as required by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. As projects develop, obligation totals will fluctuate as funds are deobligated due to low bids or savings are realized on project closeouts. Unobligated ARRA balances available to the Highway Construction Program will be used to fund Tier 3 projects. Local ARRA balances will be made available to three additional local projects which were certified on March 8. After September 30, 2010, ARRA funds may not be re-obligated and any balances will be turned over to FHWA for distribution back to the states for project cost increases. * TIGER projects are not included in this table.